Well, you can have 5D I or II for few bucks. We are talking about new camras, right? K500 might be better cam for better money. Well, it´s just ONE. That does not mean Canon is laughable. If second place is laughable for you, then we have very different measure.

Well the Sony a58 Nikon d5100- d3200 Pentax kr k500 k30 and then the canon 600d and 100d too. Basicly it doesn't matter what you will buy you will always gain something somewhere else

Doh Yes! But it takes money in this world, and if one is not willing to put few more coins in, Canon is here with 1200D. What´s problem with it then?

ok the k30 is 80 more as the 1200d. but it's about twice the camera you will get in return

the others are actually cheaper as the 1200D and significantly better.

The elph 340hs with an F7 lens on a 1/2.3 inch sensor.

Try to calculate the equiv. dof on that lens!

Cheap small cam with great zoom. What does it have to do with equivalence? Look at Sony compact cams image output. They might have more reach, more resolution, brighter glass, but they still fail against Canon in image quality department, and of course it´s not $160 or what..

I am sorry but this is simply wrong. The lens of the canon is so slow that you have no resolution to speak of at the long end. Few new camera's are worse then their predecessor. This is and by a fair margin.

Did you see Sony HX superzooms? The recent HX60V looks okay. Older brothers are (times more expensive and still very poor quality) out.

Sony also makes the RX series. There only few good superzooms. And the canon sx isn't one of them

ELPH is very pocketable (super)zoom for little money. Another class. How come RX10 is better?

The Elph 340hs is not a superzoom.

Total mess. Maybe we could dig for some reviews. Techradar has it for Sony, maybe there can be some for Canon. I believe it´s not laughable compared to other companies.

Checkout the pcmag.com review of the 340hs.

From what I´ve seen, it does not look any bad to me, compared to smudges of Sony cams at that price.

The sony is 20mp don't compare them both at 100%. besides the Sony are not the best either. Panasonic seems to be better with the TZ series.

They have also done the 1200d.

Went trough it quickly. It´s simply the cheapest one. What would one expect from it...

A better screen. phase detect on sensor like the 100D. a slightly larger viewfinder like the other canons. digic 5 processor. faster burst speed 3 Fps 18-55 STM bundled. That would make it a decent starters camera like the others. not as good in terms of sensor but it can keep up on features then.

Now it's complete and total crap that will get people out of photography.